Events now come thick and fast. There's a fire, the Japanese invade China, Precious Auntie kills herself, and a ghost-catcher puts her spirit into a jar which he seals for, he claims, "many lifetimes."
LuLing is then taken to an orphanage run by American missionaries. There she marries one of the scientists involved in the excavations, but soon he is killed fighting the Japanese. The pages describing their brief days of love are the most moving in the entire book.
Eventually LuLing manages to get to Hong Kong where she lives in dreadful conditions in the Kowloon Walled City, works as a maid, then finally gets a place in steerage to San Francisco, with a visa as personal assistant to one of the sick American missionaries.
Two important things can be deduced about this book from a brief prefatory note by the author. One is that it was difficult to write -- she thanks a writing teacher who, as editor, "resurrected this book during those days when I was scared to turn the pages" and kept her going through "times we can now acknowledge as dire." The other is that it is very extensively autobiographical. "The heart of this story belongs to my grandmother," Tan writes, "its voice to my mother."
The book's considerable strength lies in its detail. Contemporary California and China 60 years ago could hardly be more different, but Amy Tan nonetheless manages to get under the skin of each. By treating California first she hooks her American readership by vividly, and often amusingly, describing a world they already know well. Then, in turning to the foreign world of China, she clearly hopes to carry them with her there too.
In both settings she focuses on the details of everyday life that matter most to people -- what they eat for breakfast, how they look on the opposite sex, what they wear, what their houses are like, how they get their water supply. She shows no partisanship, and inhabits many worlds -- past and present, West and East -- without a glimmer of condescension, or any hint of preference.
The brief final section involves further revelations, but is essentially a serene resolution of earlier misunderstandings and difficulties. The inevitable result of this is that LuLing, a character who seems like a crotchety and difficult old woman at the book's opening, becomes an entirely credible, and even heroic, figure by the end. This was clearly Tan's aim in writing the book, and equally clearly she succeeds.
Publication Notes:
The Bonesetter's daughter
By Amy Tan
308 pages
Flamingo
RSS